Get one "summary stat" from parameters that can be used downstream

[sangeetabhatia03]

The group has highlighted that users may want one "summary" number for a parameter type which they can then use in their models. For instance, Ebola serial interval. The most obvious candidate for this summary is obviously the result of the meta-analysis, where we have done this. However, that raises some questions:

• should we provide a function to do meta-analysis? I am slightly hesitant to do this because (a) we use the meta package, so that we will be providing a very thin wrapper on another package, and (b) we made lots of very careful choices while doing meta-analysis, and doing this right needs a lot of care.
• how do we summarise parameters for which we did not do meta-analysis?

IMO, we should make available the results of meta-analysis where available and have a think about my second question.

[sangeetabhatia03]

Uploading my random notes from the meeting on 27/03 tmp.txt